Thank you, Betta Tryptophan , for your very thoughtful responses and also for your research. I know precious little about Japan and Japanese history. I’ve always been drawn more to China and Taoism rather than Japan and Buddhism.

For many years after that story came through additional stand-alone stories came through and I slowly began deciphering the many intricate connections between the stories. I have often thought that I was being given puzzle pieces to a humongous epic story and I was to put all the puzzle pieces together in order to reveal the overall story. But every time I thought I had it all figured out a new story would come through and the stories were never in any sort of chronological order. Any attempt to arrange the stories in a linear fashion in order to see the overall story turned out futile whenever a new story emerged.

A few stand-alone snippets appear in my various writings but they are not tied together in any sensible way. I finally quit trying to put together the big picture and simply allowed the individual stories to come out as they chose to. I have a feeling that there are just way, way too many of them to even try to put them all together. But who knows; maybe some day I will.

Thank you also for your research on swords. I have a strong aversion to swords and knives as well as to research on them. I just don’t want to know. I could never be a butcher or a surgeon. All the knives in my kitchen are very dull. Someone once tried to gift me with a set of sharp kitchen knives but I refused the gift. I do a lot of cooking and I’ve learned how to cook with a dull knife.

There is an old Zen parable that I read probably around four decades ago. To paraphrase it, it goes something like this:

A group of six butchers held a competition among themselves to see who could butcher an ox the fastest. Each butcher had an ox carcass before them. Before the competition commenced five of the butchers spent hours sharpening their blades. The sixth butcher just sat in meditation.

The first five butchers cut up their ox carcasses in record time, and provided all the required cuts of meat. The sixth butcher then pulled out a tiny, unsharpened knife from his belt and made just a small handful of cuts on the carcass at which point the carcass fell open into all the required cuts of meat. It took only a few seconds. While the other butchers look at him in astonishment, the sixth butcher explained that while they were sharpening their knives he was sharpening his mind.

Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something like that and it managed to stick with me.

When I was a little boy in Cub Scouts my troop was carving pumpkins with jack-knives one October day. As I stabbed my knife into the pumpkin it closed up on me and I almost cut off my pinky finger. To this day I still have a scar on my pinky finger from that experience. I think that was the last time I ever used a sharp knife.

But I digress…. I’m glad you enjoyed the story. I re-read it every few years and every time it seems I see little metaphors that I didn’t see before. I’m so glad that I left it alone and didn’t edit the heck out of it.